Politics and Culture

May 25, 2017

Decline and resilience

Back in 1988 Chris Killip published In Flagrante, his acclaimed book of photojournalism on the effects of de-industrialisation on the north-east. It was re-issued last year in larger format, with a slightly different selection, as In Flagrante Two.

Now there's a new show at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles looking at the making of Killip's study. It "offers a wider view of Killip’s dark and poetic study of decline and resilience in the North of England, and offers a behind the scenes look at the making of an iconic body of work."

Can you get further away culturally from Teesside and Tyneside than LA? These images of post-industrial England in the Seventies and Eighties must seem darkly exotic in the sunshine and blue skies of southern California.